So two days ago I was driving just to drive as I love to cruise and I came up on a intersection for a highway. My nissan maxima has been running fine no issues at all. I took my foot off the brake and just as I put it onto the gas she dropped from 800rpms to 0. She just died.no warning nothing. I got her towed home and started diagnosing.i have fuel and I'm getting spark into the distributor but no spark out of the distributor to the plugs. I figured well there's my problem.i purchased a brand new distributor and installed it. I made sure she's set correctly but still no spark out of the new one. I then took the top of the distributor off and when starting the distributor doesn't spin.i am assuming it's exposed to spin but I may be wrong. But either way she ain't running. Does anyone know what my issue could be? My Haynes manual ain't helping me with this one.

 

i am assuming it's exposed to spin but I may be wrong.[QUOTE=devon89maxima;9251112]

I don't know why because it's a nissan it would be different.of course it's exposed to spin. So turns out my timing belt broke. I thought I just lost spark hence why it died and therfore I replaced the distributor cause everything was pointing to that but turns out I just checked the wrong spark plug for spark.theres no spark issue just a timing belt issue witch I now get to dig into. I already have the timing belt for it cause I planned on changing it next month so I'm gonna throw that on now and hope all is well and nothing is bent. Just sucks because when I bought it 2 months ago the previous owner said it was only 32k miles into the new one and I've only put 3k miles into it so I'm going to assume that he was lying and trying to get ride of the ticking time bomb before he couldn't anymore. Oh well. Hopefully the fact that it was at only at 800rpms means not to much or any real damage was done.

 

Yup sounds like busted timing belt, Maxima are valve benders when the belt snaps but sometimes there will be a miracle and no valves get bent. If you end up swapping engines just dump in a Mercury Villager or Nissan Quest VG30E, the van engines are non interference